Of the darker, more adult-oriented manga of Osamu Tezuka that Vertical Inc. have recently translated and lavishly reprinted for the English-speaking armchair reader, Ayako stands out as the most consistently enigmatic and sophisticated. Originally published in three volumes from 1972-1973, Ayako is Tezuka’s attempt at creating a realist epic by way of a spy drama.
It’s interesting that you should mention the Crank movies because they’re, to my mind, the cinematic equivalent of everything that Millar’s recent creator-owned series have tried and failed to be.
I suspect the main reason why Kick-Ass and Wanted are as successful as they are is because Mark Millar is an inept satirist.
Osamu Tezuka’s manga do not look like manga. He presents narratives as a series of dynamic fragments that mirror his characters’ restless momentum. Almost every collective action is purposefully arranged via montage juxtaposition, piecing together slivers of motion rather than using their various parts to form a singular cogent image. That’s not unusual for the medium, but what’s so remarkable about it in the case of Dororo is how consistently Tezuka’s breakdowns feel like freeze frames of cell animation, more than likely a product of the influence Disney cartoons had on his work. Panels break down into component images, like a storyboard or a flipbook expressively but fastidiously rearranged to fit all on one page. As a result, Tezuka’s obsessively detailed draftsmanship overwhelms the reader with its unswerving dedication to abstracted motion.
Bat-Manga succeeds as a catalog for an exhibit that never was.
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